Leaving Lucy Pear(86)

Josiah was resolved to his fate, but determined to serve only one term. If Coolidge could pull out in front of the whole nation, Josiah thought, he could do the same in Gloucester. Granted, Coolidge’s son had died—some people said this was behind the president’s decision—but Josiah had his reasons, too. There was, for instance, the fact that he didn’t want to be mayor at all. This, too, he had told Susannah. That had been a relief.

In the meantime, in the abstract, he would continue overseeing the quarry. But Susannah would be manager now. She would do the work she already knew better than he how to do, in the corner office that had belonged first to her father and then to her husband and from which she could see, if she pressed her cheek against the wall, an unimpeded view of Ipswich Bay. She would close the doors some days, unable to speak for the grief that seized her, for all she had agreed to let go, but with time this happened less. She was free now, her mind unclouded with thoughts of her body, her body no longer bound by doctors and false hope. She lost track of her cycles. She kept Sam Turpa on. Her door stayed open.

Caleb was not there to naysay these changes. A month ago, he had dropped off a card inviting Josiah and Susannah to dinner in his formal dining room, where he had laid out one of his prized maps on the table. South America! he had cried as they entered. He would go for a few months, maybe a year. Chile, Argentina. He would see about a trek into Patagonia. He would write them. It would be good to get away.

He had gone, leaving almost no instructions about the quarry or the estate. Josiah and Susannah were left to handle paydays, the union, the shrinking demand for stone. Despite pressure from his father, Josiah had not added his own name to the company sign. He would not try to replace Caleb. The trees on the estate had not been trimmed. When Josiah looked back at it now from the middle of the bay, the buildings were barely visible, the bathhouse a little white lump behind the pines.

Susannah stopped to rest. She didn’t hold on to the boat—holding on was a disqualification—but treaded water, her eyes on the still distant mound of Hog Island.

“Your lips are purple,” he said.

“I’m cold.”

“Come in.”

She swam on. Her pace was slowing, but he would say nothing more. His fear was nothing compared with her desire. The muscles in her arms twisting and pulling, the gust of her inhale when her face lifted from the water. Her beauty stunned him, and not in a brotherly sort of way.

The day after their dinner at Caleb’s, he had picked up Emma at the coffee shop and surprised her by staying parked on Washington Street, in full view. He was the opposite of artful. His sternum felt bruised. He could not look her in the eye. “I can’t see you again,” he said. Why was he surprised when she did not weep or berate him but sat still as a rock, forcing him to look at her face in profile, her hard jaw, her throat visibly working back tears? “I’ll get myself home,” she said after a few minutes in silence. Then she was gone from his car and walking toward Leverett Street. Josiah, feverish, thinking what did he have to lose, thinking, Go, go, finish cleaning up the messes you’ve made, drove straight from there to the Hirsch estate, to apologize to Beatrice Cohn for the way he’d dropped her from the campaign. She looked different—less standoffish. She listened. He was focused on getting back to Susannah, determined to do the deed and run, but Mrs. Cohn’s face, listening, was so reminiscent of Emma’s dark girl, who had looked out at him from the perry shack with her dark eyes that bore through you, asking for something, though he couldn’t figure what, it shook loose a quaking in Josiah. And though he did not put it all together the way it was, he did have the thought, as he drove home to Susannah, that some people try very hard to have children and others not to have them but that there is never, ever a way to even it all out.

“Okay.” Susannah’s bone white fingers gripped the gunwale. “I’m done.”

As Josiah moved to help her up, the boat tilting drastically, the dark water sloshing beneath him, he saw that he could never do what Susannah did. No matter how strong he got at rowing, he could not get into that water and swim. Nausea choked him. But he remembered to spread his legs and hold the back one firm for counterbalance and he managed, grunting, Susannah’s legs nearly useless with cold, to haul her up onto the bench. He wrapped her in blankets, poured her the chocolate he’d brought, and turned the boat toward the shore. The beach swung into view, then a pair of seals, flopping up onto an edge of exposed rock. The tide was turning. He rowed harder. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “Even Ederle trains in a pool, you know.”

Susannah nodded. Her teeth chattered. Her goggles had left deep circles around her eyes. A chunk of lard had congealed at the tip of her nose. She smiled. Even her gums were purple. He had not noticed Susannah’s gums before. “It’ll be fine,” she said, and closed her eyes, letting steam from the cup warm her face. “I can see now that I’m going to make it.”





Thirty-six




In the dug-out cellar under the perry shack, Emma and Lucy faced the barrels. There were four—a little better than Emma had feared but not a fifth of what they dreamed in their dreaming days, which seemed dream-like now: Emma hunched over the PEAR VARIETIES pamphlet, Lucy reading over her shoulder, trying out the words, “bung,” “bunghole,” “wintering.” Now Emma held the bungs, and Lucy the hammer. She had been full of her usual questions last night—were the bungholes in the barrels in fact big enough, and was the juice actually done fermenting, and what would happen if they put the bungs back in before it wasn’t?—but now that they stood here, ready to complete the task, which was simple after all, and so much smaller than they had hoped, she was silent. The other children had left for school. They had lost interest in the perry long ago.